from the Mazda Vault, Mark Jordan's photos of the Club Racer Miata

[— Phatmiata —]

I was briefly chatting with Mark Jordan about an upcoming Miata book he is working on , and after sharing some photos with him from my flickr page he was kind enough to return the favor and send me some of his as well.

Below are some previously unseen photos of the 1989 Miata Club Racer.

Since I was involved in the exterior design of the Miata NA from years 1983-86, I have lots of early development photo archives. I've attached a few images from my files of the 1989 Club Racer project done in December 89. I gave up my Christmas vacation in 1989 to make this project happen! We used a Mariner blue early prototype NA as a base.

The Mariner Blue car was a pre-prototype car that was destined to be crushed. In the late 80's we had about three of these cars for North American testing. There were a couple of features on these cars that didn't make it into production, like the door panel design and some mechanical features. It was a perfect mule-car to make into the club racer.

This is the car that we showed up at the 89 Chicago show. Our purpose was to show what could be done to the Miata as a weekend street racer. We tried to make it with "bolt on parts" with the intention to offer this kit to the Miata weekend hobbyist. Unfortunately, we didn't have Mazda Japans support for the go-ahead. What a shame.

Also check out the recent article by our own Ricky Silverio about this special car and all its quirky pre-production differences here
http://mazdaroadster.net/showthread....ata-Club-Racer